Information

Access Key

Kenneth M. Cuno

Kenneth M. Cuno's research has been mainly in the social history of Egypt, 18th-20th centuries. His first book The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740-1858 (Cambridge, 1992) received “honorable mention” in the Albert Hourani book prize competition of the Middle East Studies Association, and was published in Arabic translation by the Supreme Council for Culture, Cairo, in 2000.

From political economy and agrarian history in the 18th and 19th centuries Prof. Cuno has moved, in his current book project, to the history of the family in Egypt during the "long" nineteenth century. He is particularly interested in changing patterns of family formation and changing attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and other aspects of family during the past 200 years. A continuing interest that connects the first book with the second is legal history – the history of Islamic law as it was applied in and affected society, the use of legal records (court registers and fatwas) as sources for social history, and the evolution of applied Islamic law during the era of codification and secularization. Another interest Prof. Cuno is pursuing is the shaping of identity through historical writing in Egypt and the Middle East generally.

Browse by

Recent Additions

Review essay of Göran Therborn, Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 1900–2000 (New York: Routledge, 2004); Arland Thornton, Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm ...